Is a great big melting pot really what we need?

Even in a stew the different textures, tastes and flavors are apparent but they come together in an harmonious melange.

I live here in NYC and my husband and I are of the belief that we do NOT live in a melting pot and that we definitely live in a salad bowl where each neighborhood is distinct – I don’t need homogeity but that’s not what a melting pot meant to me – a melting pot, to me, meant that in one area people of different backgrounds/ethnicities are able to live with each other without stepping one each other’s toes….many people are incapable of this and that’s why we have the salad bowl but the salad bowl makes people isolated and leaves them ignorant.

No, we need stew. All of the ingredients are still distinguishable from each other, but it all tastes so good together.

homogeneity? how do you spell that?

We need to chill the fuck out and let people live in peace without any one group trying to force it’s beliefs or customs on any other group. The second we all accept each other as people and see each other as individuals not as a religion, race or ethnic group, political party or even an accent then we an do away with needing terms like “melting pot” and “salad bowl” and just be a community made up of people.

No. I like being around different cultures, I would find it uninteresting if no one had different ways of doing things and living in general. My work consists of about 5 white girls, 10 mexicans, a guy and a girl who just moved from israel, and one guy from turkey. this is just a tiny example, but it makes things really interesting. it’s fun to learn about different cultures. i wouldn’t think of trying to make these people believe in things they don’t want to believe in. i can’t believe anyone would. variety is the spice of life!

I thought the melting pot ideal went out half a century ago.

Nothing is sacred. Someday, if we live long enough, we’ll all be Chinese.

A “melting pot” is not a blender; it is just the natural inexorable result of an open society.

@deni what of the “5 white girls”? Do they not have any cultural ethnicity? And are the Israelis, the Mexicans, and the Turk not “white”?
These labels are so slippery and so loaded with [often unintentional] meaning.

People stick with those like them. A culture mixing all of that only further creates cliques.

@anartist we have culture but we’re a lot more similar to each other than we are to the 2 people who just got here from israel and the guy who lived in turkey for 25 years. no, the israelis, mexicans, and turks are not “white”. i only use these “labels” in the best of ways. i dont know how they’d be interpreted negatively because i dont think of them negatively myself. the israelis, for examples, are not terrorists, in fact they are 2 kids my age who have taught me a ton of interesting stuff about growing up in israel. for example, kids growing up there go to the army after high school! everyone! so no one starts college til they’re 21 or 22 or 23 or so. really fascinating!

Yes, then no.
Then yes again.

It has already happened!

We really are One.

Before I read your details I was going to come on here and say. “No we don’t need a melting pot, we need a salad bowl!”.

@deni read Yael Dayan’s [daughter of Moshe Dayan] My Father, My Self and A Soldier’s Diary sometime. Her youthful Army experiences [during tenser times] are interesting. She had to learn to sleep with a gun under her pillow.